Truth in Advertising

I am inspired this week by an article written by Roy Williams, The Wizard of Ads. Before I begin, if you haven’t read any or all of his books, I recommend that you do so. To begin with they are well written, fun to read, (entertaining), and most importantly they contain truth.

Truth in advertising is something that not many people discuss. Truth in advertising sales is an oxymoron. The tragedy is that many business owners (advertisers) don’t even know enough to ask the right questions. This can be dangerous since most people selling advertising today don’t know a thing about it. They are just pretty good sales people, (there are exceptions). Now the disclaimer…the following statements do not apply to all account executives, sales managers, general managers, division managers or company presidents – just most of them!

Okay, back to truth. If you are working with a local radio rep that hasn’t been properly trained, you are probably being shown lots of “packages” or various other irrelevant things. That rep probably knows absolutely nothing about sound advertising strategy and execution and might as well be selling magazines door to door. Most of these reps look good, have good communication skills and may even have degrees in marketing…the problem is that there are few left in the business willing to teach these well intentioned young sales people why and how radio works. In many cases the managers don’t even know.

This is truly a buyer beware environment as evidenced by what happens when you first buy advertising. Immediately upon beginning a schedule, you get a plethora of calls from other advertising sales reps telling you that you need to buy what they are selling because it is better and meets your needs. Please ask yourself, how they know what your needs are? You take the appointment and they show up with a briefcase of “packages”. The problem with these packages is that they are everything that manager needs to sell and have nothing to do with what you need. BUYER BEWARE!!!

Now more truth: If you are using a traditional ad agency or media buying service you are being shown buys that are based upon cost per rating point. How many rating points should you be buying? What is the right cost to pay per rating point? Is one hundred points per week enough? How about 200 points per week? What the heck is a rating point anyway? Again, most media buyers don’t know a thing about advertising. What they are really good at is multiplication. These good people have no sense of history of advertising principles, media strategies or programs that will actually work. If this is what you are hearing from your agency – if you are being shown buys based upon how many points per week are being delivered at a specific cost…RUN. GRAB YOUR MONEY AND RUN.

Electronic media should be bought on a reach and frequency basis. Not a CPP. It is much easier, faster, “accepted” to buy on the basis of CPP. CPP should be used only as a negotiation tool for pricing. The problem is, unless you are spending Home Depot money in the market, your reach and frequency ratios will be too low. I guarantee it! If you want to have some fun and watch your reps or your media buyers face go blank, ask them to bring you an OES Schedule. Most will have no idea what you are asking for, and if their managers do, they will hate it, because of their lack of understanding of reach and frequency and how to construct a program that efficiently delivers their audiences. Next time, ask for an OES schedule, don’t tell them what it is and just sit back and watch the ensuing circus…enjoy.

OES stands for “Optimum Effective Schedule” and is a reach and frequency based program. Created by two of the brightest people ever in this business: Steve Marx and Pierre Bouvard, developed and articulated this concept which is based upon sound media principles. Here is the deal – your commercials should reach EACH specific audience (station) 3.89 times per week – be safe round it up to 4. It seems that most media sales reps believe that a weekly frequency of 3 is sufficient. Ask, yourself why they chose to round down instead of up. The answer is obvious – it is easier to sell to you because it requires fewer commercials!

My advice – make your reps bring you schedules that demonstrate reach and frequency. Only look at CPP to make certain that you are not paying too much. It’s the right thing to do. Schedules with insufficient frequency are doomed to fail. And remember, in media 1+1 does not always equal 2!